I saw this out on Kickstarter and spent part of the morning reading about it. It looks really neat. It's basically a Dwarf Fortress like town builder. The developers say that the look is inspired by early Zelda games.

It seems like you don't have an avatar of your own as far as I can tell, just the DF style villagers. I'm okay with that, but your own personal avatar would be nice as well.

Also hoping they hit 400,000 for some co-op.

Also, I didn't see too much on it, but it seems like they aren't planning a grand sandbox like minecraft or DF, but rather the maps are smaller and more goal oriented. I kinda want to see something grander, since we haven't gotten a good DF clone with this level of graphics.

Turtle and Lordnine, it doesn't look like they're going to have any problems hitting the Co-Op Stretch goal. In fact, I won't be surprised if they break $1 million. Kicktraq currently says $750,000.

They don't really have much in the way of swag, which may be both good for them financially (apparently that's a big drain on Kickstarters) but will keep their numbers down. But I still think they'll get some good bounce at the end of the project.

New Stretch Goals for $320,000 up to $380,000. $400,000 is still Co-op Multiplayer

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New Class - Geomancer: Manipulate rock and stone to bolster your city's builders, flattening or raising earth as the cause demands. Craft tireless golem workers so everyone else can take a much needed break.

She put green lights in their empty eyesockets--a fanciful touch, but she felt it gave them character. Now, she checked each rune for dust, noted every crack for the touchups she'd handle tomorrow. Powered them off, one by one. Slowly, green lights dimmed to black. "Good job, guys! Finished the whole square in just two days!" She dusted her hands, patted each fondly on the head, and shut the warehouse door.

In the dark, one pair of lights swirled back to life.

Enemy Faction - Elementals: When conditions are just right, unstoppable giants of fire, rock, ice, and air rampage across the land, destroying everything in their path. Appease them or prepare your defenses...

Verne Earthwalk fought to control his voice. "My Lords," he managed, "when I said that your incessant digging made the earth angry, I meant it. Literally."

New Class - Engineer: Fiendishly complex traps. Steam pumps. Black powder. In his moments of genius, this Master Craftsman boosts your town's productivity with miraculously advanced tools and weaponry. In his other moments....

Seasons!: Horde food for the winter and farm up a storm in the summer as the four seasons cycle over your town. Building, farming and fighting all gain new depth as rising temperatures parch the land and falling snows drive your settlers indoors.

"SNOW DAY!!!!"

Then out at $500,000:

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Alternate Planes: Many dimensions lurk beneath the fabric of reality. Lured by the promise of untold riches and arcane secrets, your bravest townsfolk open portals to previously unknown realms. What could possibly go wrong?

Through the door I saw... the sky. The sky at night, when the stars fill one end of the horizon to the other. Except... the stars were ordered in perfect rows, like corn in the field. And little round plates studded with rubies dashed around between them, jabbing lances of light at each other. One of the plates... flew apart as I watched. In a ball of fire!

...No more mushrooms for me.

-- From the diary of Archmage Twellot

They've got some cute pictures up for some of the goals like this one:

“Though color variations make it clear at which point in its cycle the banana ought to be eaten, the proper way to hold the fruit is still debated. Though all scholars agree that the curved, nearly hexagonal shape fits the human fist, accounts vary as to whether the golden peel should be pulled back from the stem (as is traditional) or up from the black nub at the bottom. Either way, so please the gods.”

--Celebrant Jordan, Treatises on the Rituals of The Monday of the Twelve Golden Fruit

$500,000 Alternate Planes: Many dimensions lurk beneath the fabric of reality. Lured by the promise of untold riches and arcane secrets, your bravest townsfolk open portals to previously unknown realms. What could possibly go wrong?

Through the door I saw... the sky. The sky at night, when the stars fill one end of the horizon to the other. Except... the stars were ordered in perfect rows, like corn in the field. And little round plates studded with rubies dashed around between them, jabbing lances of light at each other. One of the plates... flew apart as I watched. In a ball of fire!

...No more mushrooms for me.

-- From the diary of Archmage Twellot

$550,000 Upgraded Musical Score: The Japanese RPGs from which Stonehearth draws its artistic inspiration were as much defined by their soundtrack as their visual style. Help us draw on the talent of a variety of professional musicians to create an enticing score that will stand up to a decade’s worth of play.

$600,000 Three Playable Kingdoms: Hardy explorers and canny traders join our hardworking settlers in their quest to build, farm, and fight their way across the land. At the start of each game, choose one of the three kingdoms, each with its own unique perks.

With just over 36 hours left they are now over $650,000 (including Paypal contributions). New Stretch Goals both of which are "Post-Release" due to their concern about overstretching on development "[T]he issue is that we don't want to bite off more than we can chew, and end up skimping on the core game to reach even more goals by release. Our plate is pretty full right now!"

New Playable Race: Dwarves ($750,000): While the Three Kingdoms of humans spread across the world's surface, the dwarves build their own empire deep in the mountains and bedrock below.

This dwarven race will come complete with new art, entirely new play mechanics more suited to a dwarven disposition, and new classes and crafting recipes.

Help! All driven underground by fire and trapped by rocks. The ground shakes; Dwarven drums in the deep. We cannot get out... they are coming!

--Jiruk Firestarter, Goblin Shaman

Persistent, Connected World ($1,000,000): We'll offer the option to host your game on our own servers (this may require a fee). All hosted games can choose to participate in entirely new gameplay modes with other hosted cities!

Here are some of the things we're thinking about:

Your cooperative games will be available all the time, not just when the computer serving the game is on.

Establish alliances and supply-routes between friendly, player controlled cities.

Edit: I guess they are over $750k if you count PayPal (don't know why that is separate).

I think it's because Kickstarter has an agreement with Amazon taking a cut. They don't have an agreement with PayPal, so PayPal will not show up on the official Kickstarter number. For a project which is already over the minimum funding level, this is not a problem. However, for a project that hasn't made it's funding yet, even if their combined Kickstarter total (as paid through Amazon Payments) combined with PayPal numbers are over what they requested to get funding, if the Kickstarter number by itself isn't over, the Kickstarter site marks it as a failure and all funders are refunded their contributions.

You may notice some projects won't take PayPal donations until they have reached the minimum funding level. This is why.